


Darkened Nights, Violent Things

by spookyleo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, POV First Person, Will's perspective, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 07:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19883803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyleo/pseuds/spookyleo
Summary: “I’m not sure if it was first sight,” Hannibal began ,”But it couldn’t have been much later than the first couple of days.”I remembered when he had appeared at my door, the door of my fort, my cabin in the middle of nowhere. I had been vulnerable, open, and my house had been dark. He’d sat in a beam of sunlight and gifted me his care in a Tupperware container.





	Darkened Nights, Violent Things

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last September in a hyper-fixated rage after my last rewatch. I planned to write more but never got around to it, but reading through all my old drafts, I'm still in love with this. So here it is; 900 odd words of Will prosing. The title is from the song "Love At First Sight" by The Brobecks. Hope you enjoy!

When we first met, I trusted him. Instantly. Instinctively. My thoughts could never waver a fraction within the brain inside my skull that he was so intent on tearing apart, I couldn’t possibly imagine him wanting to hurt me. The thought didn’t even occur to try to imagine such a thing.

He told me I was on the autistic spectrum – which I already knew – and whilst working with me on the murders that ravaged the states surrounding Virginia, he would occasionally offer me methods of coping with the way my brain skipped over things that others did not struggle with – things like social etiquette, or the non verbal episodes I sometimes sat through. Soon, the awkward ways of my behaviour were the least of my worries.

He offered me more, as well, the kind of closeness neither of us had had with anyone else in years. We gave each other keys to the cages around our thoughts, and he unlocked me and threw away the key. I remember, on multiple occasions, laying in his or my bed, my head on his bare chest, murmuring anything I felt was important to say. He would stroke my hair and listen intently until I fell asleep.

That had been the original lust, the real one. That was when I thought, maybe we’d fall in love, maybe we’d settle down. Abigail needed parents, and I was the one who took hers away, so why couldn’t we be her fathers? In retrospect, I was a fool to think anything like that. And yet, still, in my mind, I continue to want that for us.

I don’t think Hannibal is capable of love.

I think a lot about the first day we met, when I assured him I didn’t need a therapist, him nodding in agreement and sitting down to talk to me about myself. I really fell, hook, line and sinker for that one, didn’t I?

We did fish together once or twice. He wasn’t the sort for that kind of sport, I’m sure it was just part of his hunt for me... but he sat on the river bed. On one of the dog’s blankets, a plaid patterned one, basking in a suit in the August sun, legs outstretched, one ankle folded over the other, an arm propping him up. Shadows fell across his structured face, and there was the sound of trees rustling, water rushing past my calves, and birds singing. He never took his eyes off me as we chattered, meaninglessly, jokes rising like heat in the air, and as we both hunted.

“Lately, I’ve been thinking about the first few months that we knew each other,” It was odd to speak to Hannibal when he was contained within a cell. It was odd to have turned the tables on him, to have him completely within control, no chance of him hurting another being, and yet for him to seem so dangerous, more potent than ever. He spoke to me from where he was contained, behind the glass, and it was like I was feeling his voice rumble through his throat, pressed against mine as the blade in his hand intruded my stomach, all over again.

My arms folded against my chest.

“What about them?” my chin raised inquisitively as I spoke – involuntarily, but I could tell from the way his eyes followed mine that it was intriguing to him, that he was analysing each and every breath I took, every movement I made, deciphering it and plotting what was to come next.

“Do you believe in love at first sight, Will?” he did that often. Branch off onto another line of thinking, or a similar one phrased differently, often as a question, opening up the conversation to me. It always felt manipulative, like he was setting a trap and I was walking right into it, a rope in which he’d use to pull me in, bind me, keep me as his forever. It was far too late for traps. I was already in his embrace. This was just his way of reminding me.

I breathed out, then spoke, calculatedly, calm.

“I don’t think I could say that I do.”

He smiled at that, a soft exhale of laughter pursing through his nose. I had come to learn that Hannibal found odd things amusing. We were all his playthings, really, weren’t we?

“Of course you don’t,” he seemed as poised as ever, smile lines creasing his face into an abstract form of himself – an apparition of a man who wasn’t behind a sheet of reinforced glass, who could smile at a joke as he made us breakfast, who could walk the dogs with me.

“You didn’t fall in love with me the first time you met me, did you?”

I stilled, even more frozen than I had been before. Heard my heart pounding in my chest. Eyes locked with his for a fraction of a second, then flicked away.

“Did you?” I shoot back at him.

I felt him grin again, felt his eyes move from me, and I moved my own back to watch him, a stare boring as deep into his soul as I could muster.

“I’m not sure if it was first sight,” Hannibal began ,”But it couldn’t have been much later than the first couple of days.”

I remembered when he had appeared at my door, the door of my fort, my cabin in the middle of nowhere. I had been vulnerable, open, and my house had been dark. He’d sat in a beam of sunlight and gifted me his care in a Tupperware container.

I shifted for a few seconds, cast a lingering glance into his eyes, then walked towards the door.

“It was nice to see you, Will,” he called after me.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay but I also watched Red Dragon a few weeks ago and I have the gifs of Will being stabbed in both the Norton/Hopkins and Dancy/Mikkelson versions playing over and over in my head. Hope they don't awake anything in me!!! We love a bit of phallic imagery xx  
> You can find me on tumblr at @avengers4 :)


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